Alex RaineyAlex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.
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Jan 28, 2025 07:34 PM
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Jan 28, 2025
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Most people in customer support feel very strongly that you NEED to make it really clear to the customer they're talking with an AI assistant/bot. I think the exact opposite is true (and the data agrees). Two reasons.
- People have extremely negative connotations with ‘bots’ and automated support.
- This is after years of poor customer service given by these ‘dumb’ technologies.
- Things are clearly different now with AI.
- But people still have the same very low expectations, and they're mentally hard-wired to try to circumvent the AI agent and escalate it to a person.
- Basically, they don't even want to try it.
- People speak differently to a human agent than an AI agent.
- The problem that comes from this is that AI agents are designed to think, interpret and gather information like a human agent would.
- So if someone doesn't provide much detail or context, the AI agent might struggle to be as helpful.
- The way we search on Google is brief, very condensed and keyword driven.
- The way we speak to a person is in sentences, with context and a goal of what we're trying to achieve.
- It's the same with chatbots vs. AI agents.
The result is that people dodge AI agents altogether and/or interact with them like search. This ends up being frustrating for customers, as they've got the bad experience they expected. The AI agent is left completely underutilized.
So consider instead, you give your AI agent a name and an avatar picture.
- You don't have to pretend they're an actual human on your team (and it definitely needs to say it's AI if a customer asks).
- But even a name and friendly avatar image will change how people interact with your AI agent.
The result (which Intercom also found) is that a much higher proportion (10-20%) of customer tickets and conversations are handled entirely by AI.
- Customers ask more detailed questions and share what they're trying to achieve
- Customers have a few interactions, back and forth, with the AI agent (instead of immediately asking for someone)
- Customers don't feel the need to check the answer with a human agent
A small simple change, that can have so much impact.
Written by
Alex Rainey
Alex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.
